Can you feel the excitement? Don’t kid yourself, this has World Cup Fever written all over it–BTG Pactual is going for the gold. Here’s an exercise: drop “André Esteves” with the word, “star” into Google and see what comes up. I’m serious. Or you can just take my word for it. Reuters refers to him as a “wunderkind” while Forbes prefers “swashbuckling”. I don’t doubt the man’s savvy, but really, media people, get a grip. And you wonder why the public holds you in such low esteem?

Anyway, this analysis compares it to Goldman Sachs’ IPO, which is a comparison I would court if I were Esteves, but I’m not sure how instructive that is for the rest of us. My knee-jerk reaction was how it will compare with the IPOs of some of the Chinese banks a few years back, but let me think about this some more. The more relevant point, as mentioned in the wunderkind article, might be about return on equity. In the meantime, seriously: World Cup Fever.